The Last Remnant

Nobody
will accuse The Last Remnant of being too ambitious. Square Enix's latest RPG
mixes a dollop of tactical warfare into a familiar console-epic recipe,
tweaking conventions without breaking them. When a game executes the old
standards with Remnant's grace, though, a tweak might be enough.

Remnant'snew ideas play out on the
battlefield, where instead of controlling individual fighters, you command
"unions" of up to five units each. You issue stirring orders like "Don't be
afraid to die!" to your troops, and each character takes action accordingly. At
first, this big-picture framework might annoy micromanagers, but there are
plenty of details to obsess over, like which mercenaries to recruit and what
formation best conceals your scrubs' weaknesses.

The
main story—a nuclear-proliferation crisis translated into the realm of
enchanted talismans—does a workmanlike job of moving the action forward. Remnant's narrative gems are
found on a more intimate level, in the interactions between protagonist Rush
Sykes and his companions. These are characters, not caricatures, and in spite
of the occasional patch of tin-eared dialogue, they form an engrossing
emotional connection.

Rush's
world is gorgeous, and once the game opens up to side quests, you'll want to
explore for the sake of exploring, not just to collect the next "+1 ATK"
equipment upgrade. But during battles, Remnant uses a rapid-cutting,
zoomed-in style more suited to a Bourne fight sequence than to large-scale
tactics. Battles are also plagued by graphical slowdown and choppy frame rate,
so if that sort of thing bothers you, consider waiting for the PC or
PlayStation 3 release to see if Square Enix fixes the problem.

Beyond
the game:
The Remnant music,
a blend of rock and orchestral themes, is the best Square Enix soundtrack since
Final Fantasy
maestro Nobuo Uematsu left the company.

Worth
playing for: It's
a while before the game fully hands over the reins to its battle system, but
once it does, an 18-man fighting force makes for some insane skirmishes.

Frustration
sets in when: You're
near death, and the CPU inexplicably leaves healing spells off the next turn's
"context-sensitive" menu of tactics. Game over.

Final
judgment:
If Square Enix polishes the rough edges off this game'snovel combat system, Remnant could be the foundation
of an excellent series.